by Tim Andersen
“First time torching Troll-bots,” she said with pride.
“Why don’t I see any of our bots?”
“They all got sent to Trollworld,” she said, as if this were the most obvious thing. “Safer for us to stay here and wreck their bots.”
We were making our way towards Constitution Avenue. The Interstellar Academy of Sciences, with its massive bronze statue of Einstein out front, was the first building we came to. The Fenn Building was directly behind it. As we passed by the statue, we heard a buzzing sound growing gradually louder. Vasquez stiffened, swore, and started hustling me towards the statue. We crouched in its shadow as winged Troll-bot, vaguely like a dragonfly, buzzed overhead. When it reached our position, it hovered over us, looking around. Perhaps it had seen us and lost sight amongst the trees of Einstein’s little grotto. Vasquez pointed her RPG up at it and fired. The grenade flew up, clipped its wing, and exploded several meters away from it. The blast pushed it towards us, and, badly damaged, it hit the other side of the statue and bounced to the ground out of sight. “Yes!” said Vasquez.
She stood up and was starting to help me to my feet when a plasma disruptor blast severed Einstein’s right arm, which had been made so as to appear to be supporting him in a reclining position on a bench. Oddly, Vasquez said, “you can’t do that!” She peeked under the statue’s right armpit and, looking back at me said, “stay there.” She moved out a little further and, whipping up her disruptor, pulled the trigger down. She fired for a good ten seconds.
Satisfied, she tried to shoulder her disruptor, but it was so hot she threw it down. The barrel had melted. “Damn,” she said, then turning to me, “quick, we need to run for it. The Fenn Building is just a block down 23rd.”
I let her lead me on a mad dash to the street. On the way I saw the remains of the Troll-bot she had destroyed. It had melted into a puddle.
We made it to the Fenn Building without any more surprises. We came to the main entrance. It too had been covered with force membrane. Vasquez slipped an ID card into a reader outside and the membrane dropped.
Once inside, Vasquez left me with the shelter warden. I watched her leave to rejoin her unit, forgetting even to say thanks.
As the warden checked me in I wondered about Lika. Now that the streets of the Capital were unsafe, I could not go about looking for her. My only hope was that she had materialized somewhere safer than I did.
The warden was asking me something and I turned to look at her blankly. “What?” I said.
“Name, your name,” she said.
The warden was a matronly type, probably the type of person who normally volunteered on weekends at the animal shelter. She had the tough but even face of a veteran school teacher, one who commanded respect and got it. “Oh, er, Fenn, Goshan Fenn,” I said.
“Did you say Fenn? You wouldn’t by chance be the Minister’s son?”
“Oh, yeah,” I said, having forgot that, although most people were too busy with their own lives to know who was in the cabinet, here my name would be well known. I had not thought of my mom since this whole thing started, and now I vaguely wondered if she was safe. Probably with Prime Minister Evo in some subterranean bunker, I wagered, but I asked anyway.
“Not in the District, I can tell you that,” she answered. “Probably not on the continent if they’re smart.”
“That bad?”
“You know,” she said, “nobody seems to know, but I think we’ll be okay. I feel sorry for all those people on the colonies. We haven’t heard much from them since the Trolls took out our superlight communications arrays. Nobody’s had a chance to see if they’re alright.”
“What about Sylvania?”
“Sylvania? Do you have friends or family there?”
“Well, you heard about our base there, didn’t you?”
She shook her head, “I don’t anything about that. What happened to it?”
“Oh, I, er, was wondering about a friend in the Sylvanian protection force,” I lied.
“Sorry,” she said, holding a hand on my shoulder in sympathy, which made me feel rotten, but I had learned something valuable. If she did not know about it, it was probably not public knowledge that the Sylvanians had taken it. Whether what the Abbot had shown us had actually happened and whether anybody on Earth knew about it if it did, was another question.
She continued, “anyway, the reason I asked if you were the minister’s son was that we’ve been looking for you.”
“But I’ve been away on an expedition,” I said. Surely they would have known that.
“Somebody seems to think that you’d returned yesterday because they were asking about you even before the attack,” she said.
I was feeling nervous. Lika and I had spoken about the possibility of arrest when we returned, but, in reality, I had not believed it. I had assumed that everyone would recognize Crispin as the lunatic that he was. Then again, he had proven that he was a master of deceit.
I was painfully aware that I was not so gifted. My drunken story had gotten me past the Earth Guards but that would not work here. “I, er, who,” I tried to say nonchalantly, “who’s asking for me?”
“I was.”
My head snapped around, and I saw Trexel emerging from a doorway. “You!” I said.
He turned to the warden. “I’ll take him from here Laisha,” he said.
She smiled, as Trexel took me by the arm, apparently thinking that she was witnessing the reuniting of two long lost friends. Trexel played it up by saying loudly, “so good to see you Goshan.”
As he shut the door behind us, I saw that we were in the stairs leading down to the sub-basement. “The elevators and upper floors are off-limits now. Come to my new office.”
He took me down several flights and past some old translation machines that my grandfather would have used. His new office turned out to be a curtained off corner adjacent to a boiler. It had the appearance of having been hastily cleaned of cobwebs. There were quite a few cots set up down here with government employees playing cards or reading or otherwise trying to pass the impossible tedium of hiding out. “Most of the shelters are in the Metro,” said Trexel, shutting the curtain to give us semi-privacy. “You’re lucky to be here my friend. The smell’s not so bad.”
Inside this make-shift office was a small portable console as well as a cot and a trunk. I also noticed that Trexel was carrying a side-arm. I knew that he had been a reserve officer for many years, so it was not unusual.
He motioned me to the bed while he sat on the trunk, giving him a significant height advantage over me despite being shorter than me. “So,” he said, “what do you have to say for yourself?”
“I, er, I don’t know. Where’s Crispin?”
“Dead,” he said.
“Dead? What do you mean? I thought he came back in the Seeker.”
“He did,” said Trexel, “but before he could land he was blown to pieces.”
“Trolls?”
“Possibly,” he said, “no one can say for certain. I know that the official report gave him up to a homing missile. God knows that the Trolls targeted our orbital facilities first, and he was killed in geosync, seconds after his Pipe, but I wonder. Not a single radar detected the missile, and usually the Trolls fire lots and lots of missiles and hope that one gets through.”
“So what do you think happened?”
“Why don’t you tell me, Goshan? You were working for me, and I don’t know if you knew this, but so was Crispin.”
“He was?” I said, in a very lame fake surprise.
“You’re damn right he was!” shouted Trexel, standing, “and a good man too.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, in voice that said I clearly was not.
“You’re sorry? Don’t play sympathetic with me. If you’re so sorry, tell me what happened out there.” He tickled his sidearm with his right hand, but I had a vague feeling that it was an empty threat. Even he would not do me in with people so close by.
I was an
gry. In fact, I felt angrier than I could remember feeling since I found out that Crispin betrayed us. “You know what happened?” I said, in a menacing tone that surprised him, making him take a step back. “Your good friend went nuts.”
“What do you mean nuts?”
“One moment we’re with the Amidans, and the next Crispin is firing off accusations and threats at everyone. If you sent him as a spy, you can bet he blew his cover before he found out a thing. Blew mine too. He left with the same assumptions he came with and not a shred of evidence.”
Trexel smiled, making me uneasy. “Well, Goshan, that’s why I sent you. In case he failed. I knew he could be rash.” He sat down again and rubbed his face. I was not to be intimidated, and it looked as if he were changing tactics. “Look Goshan, your mom wasn’t too happy with the prospect of your being sent, but she’s always been willing to sacrifice as much herself as she asked of others.”
“Mom knew about it?” I was feeling queasy now. I thought about what Smith had asked me before the start of the mission about the military asking me to spy.
“She’s the Minister of Defense, Goshan. You think she didn’t know? She authorized it herself. She signed the tab right in front of me. The point is that she was expecting you to do this, not just for your planet but for her too.”
“Alright,” I said, “you wanted to know if Smith can be trusted. Well, as far as I could make out he’s honest. He’s a patriot.”
“Don’t mess with me, Goshan.”
“I’m not, Greg. You’re right, he did communicate with the Amidans in secret but only because that’s what they asked for.”
“Of course they asked for it,” he said, “that’s how you get a double agent. I should know. I used to be a recruiter.”
I did not know this about him and filed it away for future reference. “But they weren’t recruiting him for anything,” I said. “They said there were spies in the government who could monitor official channels and that they needed to communicate with Smith secretly to avoid them.”
“Who told you that? Smith?”
“The Amidans did. I saw the communication translations.”
“How do you know they were the real ones? I don’t suppose you brought them with you?”
“I, er, I . . .” I trailed off.
“The first rule in espionage, Goshan. It’s what they don’t want you to know that’s important. Never believe anything they tell you after your cover’s blown. That they let you stay after knowing you were a spy should have told you something.”
“They let me stay because they knew I wouldn’t betray them!”
“Is that so?” he said, eyebrows arching. “I thought I could count on you to be a right side in this, especially during a time of war, Goshan. Your mom is doing her best to try and save us from annihilation. Can you really afford not to do your bit?”
“Stop talking about my mom,” I said. “She’s my mom.”
“But she’s also in charge of the defense of Earth and its colonies. Right now, that is her first duty. Now, either you agree to help us, to help her, or you can be held in a military prison until this is all over, and we can decide what to do with you.”
“What?” I said. “My mom would never---” I stood up. “Get me a console. I want to talk to her right now!”
“And what are you going to tell her, Goshan?” he said, softly.
“The truth.”
“The truth? That you won’t help us? She signed the form that sent you on your spy mission. She knows what your job was and still is. She agreed to it. Do you think she’s going to back out on that? She’s just going to say, ‘oh, Goshan won’t do it, oh well, let him just sit on his ass then.’” He imitated my mother’s voice with an irritating falsetto.
“I’ll tell her that there’s nothing wrong with Smith or his mission. That he’s getting the Amidan’s help for us.”
“Help? For us? I haven’t seen a thing from them yet except that ship that conveniently blew up. How do we know the technology they gave us isn’t faulty? If you want to stay out of prison, you better hope that they send the cavalry awfully soon.”
He had a point. I did not know what sort of help the Amidans planned to provide. I did not know their plan or even when they might act. I just had a vague sort of trust that they would do something. For all I knew I could spend months or years in prison before they did anything (if they ever did), the war raging all the while. In a time of war my mother might not be able to keep me out of jail. More than that I had an awful feeling that Trexel was right, that she would be disappointed in me if I did not do what she, through Trexel, had expected me to do.
“Look, Goshan,” said Trexel, sensing that he was on the verge of winning me over, “we know that Smith and his assistant---”
“Lika.”
“---Lika, might be innocent. We’re perfectly willing to believe that the Amidans want to help us. We have been adapting the artificial gravity into a weapon that could be ready in a few months, so it’s not like we have no reason to trust them. The problem is that we need to know that we have all hands on deck here and that you’re willing to do your part for planet Earth. So are you?”
I nodded silently, feeling broken.
“That’s all I need,” he said, “now, you can start by telling me everything that happened out there. And I trust you not to omit anything, Goshan. I’ll find out if you do.”
I began to tell him the whole story from the beginning. Despite his warning I did leave out my brush with hypothermia, which, at this point, was still personal and not especially relevant. I did however tell him about everything the Abbot had shown us about Sylvania and the New Sol take-over, and he leaned forward with keen interest as I described the details of the battle. When I mentioned the distress signal, he said, “pah, we’ve received no such thing.”
I finished by telling him about Lika’s intention to negotiate with the Trolls for a cease-fire.
“You say she did not materialize with you?”
I shook my head.
“Did you check all around the Memorial, in the basement and the bookstore?” There was, and had been for over a century, a small bookstore just inside the portico. I shook my head again.
“Damn it, Goshan. You don’t really know, do you? You could have easily left her there.”
I froze. I had somehow been sure that she had materialized somewhere else entirely, but events, starting with the Troll-bot’s attack, had gotten away from me. I stood up sharply.
He motioned for me to sit back down. “Relax and let me bail you out,” he said. He pointed at the portable console. “I have a report here, which I received from my friends in the security forces, that a sweep of the Memorial’s interior and grounds after your arrival revealed no trace of other people. So if she did appear, either it was somewhere else or she left you there.”
“She would not have left me there.”
“If you say so, Goshan. The point is that, according to my reports here, she has not turned up anywhere, in any patrol. We have no idea where she is. We do feel that she may want to make contact with you again. If she does, either here at the shelter or anywhere else, I want you to let me know.”
I stared at him, neither assenting nor refusing. “Why?” I said.
“Because she’s missing, and, in case you’ve forgotten, she also works for me. I need to know that she’s safe.” This was obviously a lie. “Anyway, this is not a suggestion, it’s an order. We’re at war, and you need to think like a soldier. Will you do it or not?”
“Yes,” I lied.
He studied my face for a moment. I tried to keep a poker face, unconsciously holding my breath. After a moment, he nodded and said, “good.”
“Now, before I let you go,” he said. “Let’s talk about this attack that allegedly happened on our base. As far as we know, our warships in the New Sol system are still carrying out their patrol functions. It’s true that they were all briefly at the base when trainees were taken on board, and we�
��ve had reports from a . . .” He checked the console. “Lieutenant Richardson, saying that the Commander is ill with some local virus, and she’s taken command while he’s laid up. There’s no report of an attack from Trolls or Sylvanians. Since then of course, interstellar contact has been cut off because our superlight arrays were one of the first targets the Trolls eliminated. We’ve been relaying communications by Pipe courier until something else can be arranged.”
“I know what I saw,” I said.
“That they showed you after your cover was blown,” he said, pointing a finger at me. “But don’t worry. I’ll have it checked out as soon as a courier can be dispatched.”
I nodded.
“Well then, Goshan, I’m going to let you go now, for what it’s worth. I hope you take some more time to think about where your loyalties lie and come to the right conclusion. In the meantime, I want you to carry a sidearm.” He opened the trunk, which contained several handguns, walkie-talkies, and a medkit. He handed me a pistol in a holster. “You do know how to use one?”
“I, er, trained on one a little, for, uh, photo-ops on mom’s campaigns.”
“Photo-ops? Well, for your sake, I hope you practiced a lot for them. Just keep the safety on while you’re in the building. Those are bot-killer explosive rounds so watch out for the recoil.”
I examined the pistol. It was a conventional projectile weapon. Plasma disruptors still required a large power pack and were too bulky to carry around. I put it on. The holster attached snuggly under my left armpit. I had never liked guns. Neither had mom, even though she commanded millions who used them daily. I worried that I would end up killing someone by accident. On the other hand, it did make me feel better to have it. At least if another bot attacked me, I would not be defenseless.
I left Trexel and headed out into the cavernous sub-basement. Looking back at his little curtained enclosure, I could not help comparing him to a spider, sitting at the center of her web. Trexel was a government functionary, a manager, and yet here he was reading military reports, carrying weapons, recruiting people. It was as if he had become a different person, or maybe he had simply removed his mask and was now being the person he was before. I knew little about him, but more and more he seemed to be a very dangerous man. If anything had saved me from his wrath, it was his perception of my innocent and controllable nature. But with events moving in such perilous paths as they were, I was quickly losing both of those traits.